Weaving Identities

Author : Carol Hendrickson
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2010-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780292779440

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Weaving Identities by Carol Hendrickson Pdf

Traje, the brightly colored traditional dress of the highland Maya, is the principal visual expression of indigenous identity in Guatemala today. Whether worn in beauty pageants, made for religious celebrations, or sold in tourist markets, traje is more than "mere cloth"—it plays an active role in the construction and expression of ethnicity, gender, education, politics, wealth, and nationality for Maya and non-Maya alike. Carol Hendrickson presents an ethnography of clothing focused on the traje—particularly women's traje—of Tecpán, Guatemala, a bi-ethnic community in the central highlands. She covers the period from 1980, when the recent round of violence began, to the early 1990s, when Maya revitalization efforts emerged. Using a symbolic analysis informed by political concerns, Hendrickson seeks to increase the value accorded to a subject like weaving, which is sometimes disparaged as "craft" or "women's work." She examines traje in three dimensions—as part of the enduring images of the "Indian," as an indicator of change in the human life cycle and cloth production, and as a medium for innovation and creative expression. From this study emerges a picture of highland life in which traje and the people who wear it are bound to tradition and place, yet are also actively changing and reflecting the wider world. The book will be important reading for all those interested in the contemporary Maya, the cultural analysis of material culture, and the role of women in culture preservation and change.

Author : Paula García-Ramírez,Beatriz Valverde,Angélica Varandas,Jason Whittaker
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 235 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2023-11-30
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781000988093

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Weaving Tales by Paula García-Ramírez,Beatriz Valverde,Angélica Varandas,Jason Whittaker Pdf

This collection of essays brings together a wide range of Spanish and Portuguese academics and writers exploring the ways in which our encounters with literatures in English inform our assumptions about texts and identities (or texts as identities) and the way we read them. Mapping, examining, reading and re-reading, fashioning and self-fashioning and, especially, weaving appear as appropriate images that convey the complexity and the nature of creative writing. Such a metaphor has been fundamental for the history of world literature since the Roman poet Ovid had included a tale in his Metamorphoses in which weaving, narration, uncertain identities, and the risks of telling uncomfortable truths all figure prominently. As such, these essays trace the intertwined patterns that knit texts together, weaving identities as well as undoing them and, in the process, interrogating established and official truths.

Author : Claire Taylor
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2009-01-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781443803779

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Identity, Nation, Discourse by Claire Taylor Pdf

This volume explores women’s literary and cultural production in Latin America, and suggests how such works engage with discourses of identity, nationhood, and gender. Including contributions by several prominent Latin American scholars themselves, it seeks to provide a vital insight into the analysis and reception of the works in a local context, and foster debate between Latin American and metropolitan academics. The book is divided into two sections: Women and Nationhood, and Models and Genres. The first section comprises six chapters which examines women’s responses to, and attempts to carve out space within, national discourses in a Latin American context. Spanning the nineteenth century to the present day, the chapters offer an insight into the ways in which Latin American women have constructed themselves as modern subjects of the nation, and made use of the ambiguous spaces created by modernization and national discourses. The section starts firstly with a focus on the Southern Cone, covering Chile and Argentina, and then moves geographically northward, to Colombia and Bolivia. The second section, Models and Genres, consists of six chapters that examine how women writers engage with, and critically re-work, existing literary discourses and paradigms. Considering phenomena such as detective fiction, fairy-tales, and classical mythological figures, the chapters illustrate how these genres and models–frequently coded as masculine–are given new inflections, both as a result of their deployment by women, and as a result of their re-working in a Latin American context.

Author : Hilary E. Kahn
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2010-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0292779771

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Seeing and Being Seen by Hilary E. Kahn Pdf

The practice of morality and the formation of identity among an indigenous Latin American culture are framed in a pioneering ethnography of sight that attempts to reverse the trend of anthropological fieldwork and theory overshadowing one another. In this vital and richly detailed work, methodology and theory are treated as complementary partners as the author explores the dynamic Mayan customs of the Q'eqchi' people living in the cultural crossroads of Livingston, Guatemala. Here, Q'eqchi', Ladino, and Garifuna (Caribbean-coast Afro-Indians) societies interact among themselves and with others ranging from government officials to capitalists to contemporary tourists. The fieldwork explores the politics of sight and incorporates a video camera operated by multiple people—the author and the Q'eqchi' people themselves—to watch unobtrusively the traditions, rituals, and everyday actions that exemplify the long-standing moral concepts guiding the Q'eqchi' in their relationships and tribulations. Sharing the camera lens, as well as the lens of ethnographic authority, allows the author to slip into the world of the Q'eqchi' and capture their moral, social, political, economic, and spiritual constructs shaped by history, ancestry, external forces, and time itself. A comprehensive history of the Q'eqchi' illustrates how these former plantation laborers migrated to lands far from their Mayan ancestral homes to co-exist as one of several competing cultures, and what impact this had on maintaining continuity in their identities, moral codes of conduct, and perception of the changing outside world. With the innovative use of visual methods and theories, the author's reflexive, sensory-oriented ethnographic approach makes this a study that itself becomes a reflection of the complex set of social structures embodied in its subject.

Author : Deborah Fahy Bryceson,Judith Okely,Jonathan Meir Webber
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1845451627

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Identity and Networks by Deborah Fahy Bryceson,Judith Okely,Jonathan Meir Webber Pdf

Contrary to the negative assessments of the social order that have become prevalent in the media since 9/11, this collection of essays focuses on the enormous social creativity being invested as collective identities are reconfigured. It emphasizes on the reformulation of ethnic and gender relationships and identities in public life.

Author : Lloyd L. Lee
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
Page : 129 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2020-05-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780816540686

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Diné Identity in a Twenty-First-Century World by Lloyd L. Lee Pdf

Diné identity in the twenty-first century is distinctive and personal. It is a mixture of traditions, customs, values, behaviors, technologies, worldviews, languages, and lifeways. It is a holistic experience. Diné identity is analogous to Diné weaving: like weaving, Diné identity intertwines all of life’s elements together. In this important new book, Lloyd L. Lee, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and an associate professor of Native American studies, takes up and provides insight on the most essential of human questions: who are we? Finding value and meaning in the Diné way of life has always been a hallmark of Diné studies. Lee’s Diné-centric approach to identity gives the reader a deep appreciation for the Diné way of life. Lee incorporates Diné baa hane’ (Navajo history), Sa’a? ́h Naagháí Bik’eh Hózho? ́o? ́n (harmony), Diné Bizaad (language), K’é (relations), K’éí (clanship), and Níhi Kéyah (land) to address the melding of past, present, and future that are the hallmarks of the Diné way of life. This study, informed by personal experience, offers an inclusive view of identity that is encompassing of cultural and historical diversity. To illustrate this, Lee shares a spectrum of Diné insights on what it means to be human. Diné Identity in a Twenty-First-Century World opens a productive conversation on the complexity of understanding and the richness of current Diné identities.

Author : Sophie Woodward
Publisher : Berg
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2007-11-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781847887511

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Why Women Wear What They Wear by Sophie Woodward Pdf

Presents an intimate ethnography of clothing choice. This book uses real women's lives and clothing decisions-observed and discussed at the moment of getting dressed - to illustrate theories of clothing, the body, and identity. It provides students of anthropology and fashion with a fresh perspective on the social issues and constraints.

Author : Alexia Bloch
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2016-03-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780812293623

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Red Ties and Residential Schools by Alexia Bloch Pdf

In this book Alexia Bloch examines the experiences of a community of Evenki, an indigenous group in central Siberia, to consider the place of residential schooling inidentity politics in contemporary Russia. Residential schools established in the 1920s brought Siberians under the purview of the Soviet state, and Bloch demonstrates how in the post-Soviet era, a time of jarring social change, these schools continue to embody the salience of Soviet cultural practices and the spirit of belonging to a collective. She explores how Evenk intellectuals are endowing residential schools with new symbolic power and turning them into a locus for political mobilization. In contrast to the binary model of oppressed/oppressor underlying many accounts of state/indigenous relations, Bloch's work provides a complex picture of the experiences of Siberians in Soviet and post-Soviet society. Bloch's research, conducted in a central Siberian town during the 1990s, is ethnographically grounded in life stories recorded with Evenk women; surveys of households navigating histories of collectivization and recent, rampant privatization; and in residential schools and in museums, both central to Evenk identity politics. While considering how residential schools once targeted marginalized reindeer herders, especially young girls, for socialization and assimilation, Bloch reveals how class, region, and gendered experience currently influence perspectives on residential schooling. The analysis centers on the ways vehicles of the Soviet state have been reworked and still sometimes embraced by members of an indigenous community as they forge new identities and allegiances in the post-Soviet era.

Author : Laura Weigert
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 0801440084

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Weaving Sacred Stories by Laura Weigert Pdf

Spanning the backs of choir stalls above the heads of the canons and their officials, large-scale tapestries of saints' lives functioned as both architectural elements and pictorial narratives in the late Middle Ages. In an extensively illustrated book that features sixteen color plates, Laura Weigert examines the role of these tapestries in ritual performances. She situates individual tapestries within their architectural and ceremonial settings, arguing that the tapestries contributed to a process of storytelling in which the clerical elite of late medieval cities legitimated and defended their position in the social sphere.Weigert focuses on three of the most spectacular and little-studied tapestry series preserved from the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: Lives of Saints Piat and Eleutherius (Notre-Dame, Tournai), Life of Saint Steven (Saint-Steven, Auxerre [now Musée du Moyen Age, Paris]), and Life of Saints Gervasius and Protasius (Saint-Julien, Le Mans). Each of these tapestries, measuring over forty meters in length, included elements that have traditionally been defined as either lay or clerical. On the prescribed days when the tapestries were displayed, the liturgical performance for which they were the setting sought to merge the history and patron saint of the local community with the universal history of the Christian church. Weigert combines a detailed analysis of the narrative structure of individual images with a discussion of the particular social circumstances in which they were produced and perceived. Weaving Sacred Stories is thereby significant not only to the history of medieval art but also to art history and cultural studies in general.

Author : Elka Marie Stevens
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 426 pages
File Size : 48,6 Mb
Release : 2002
Category : Electronic
ISBN : MINN:31951P00819166A

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Construction of Personal and Social Identities Through Contemporary Appearance by Elka Marie Stevens Pdf

Author : Michèle Hayeur Smith
Publisher : University Press of Florida
Page : 214 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2023-01-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780813072777

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The Valkyries’ Loom by Michèle Hayeur Smith Pdf

Using textiles to understand gender and economy in Norse societies In The Valkyries’ Loom, Michèle Hayeur Smith examines Viking textiles as evidence of the little-known work of women in the Norse colonies that expanded from Scandinavia across the North Atlantic in the ninth century AD. While previous researchers have overlooked textiles as insignificant artifacts, Hayeur Smith is the first to use them to understand gender and economy in Norse societies of the North Atlantic.  This groundbreaking study is based on the author’s systematic comparative analysis of the vast textile collections in Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands, materials that are largely unknown even to archaeologists and span 1,000 years. Through these garments and fragments, Hayeur Smith provides new insights into how the women of these island nations influenced international trade by producing cloth (vaðmál); how they shaped the development of national identities by creating clothing; and how they helped their communities survive climate change by reengineering clothes during the Little Ice Age. She supplements her analysis by revealing societal attitudes about weaving through the poem “Darraðarljoð” from Njál’s Saga, in which the Valkyries—Óðin’s female warrior spirits—produce the cloth of history and decide the fates of men and nations.  Bringing Norse women and their labor to the forefront of research, Hayeur Smith establishes the foundation for a gendered archaeology of the North Atlantic that has never been attempted before. This monumental and innovative work contributes to global discussions about the hidden roles of women in past societies in preserving tradition and guiding change.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 168 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 1995
Category : Feminism
ISBN : IOWA:31858032038105

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Feminist Collections by Anonim Pdf

Author : Roger A. Coate,Markus Thiel
Publisher : Firstforumpress
Page : 226 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Political Science
ISBN : STANFORD:36105215377677

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Identity Politics in the Age of Globalization by Roger A. Coate,Markus Thiel Pdf

Despite the homogenizing effect of globalization, identity politics have gained significance¿numerous groups have achieved political goals and gained recognition based on, for example, their common gender, religion, ethnicity, or disability. Are each of these groups unique, or can comparisons be drawn among them? What is the impact of globalization on identity politics? The authors of Identity Politics offer a comprehensive analytical framework and detailed case studies to explain how identity-based collectives both exploit and are shaped by the new realities of a globalized world.

Author : Pavel Shlossberg
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2015-06-11
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780816530991

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Crafting Identity by Pavel Shlossberg Pdf

Crafting Identity goes far beyond folklore in its ethnographic exploration of mask making in central Mexico. In addition to examining larger theoretical issues about indigenous and mestizo identity and cultural citizenship as represented through masks and festivals, the book also examines how dominant institutions of cultural production (art, media, and tourism) mediate Mexican “arte popular,” which makes Mexican indigeneity “digestible” from the standpoint of elite and popular Mexican nationalism and American and global markets for folklore. The first ethnographic study of its kind, the book examines how indigenous and mestizo mask makers, both popular and elite, view and contest relations of power and inequality through their craft. Using data from his interviews with mask makers, collectors, museum curators, editors, and others, Pavel Shlossberg places the artisans within the larger context of their relationships with the nation-state and Mexican elites, as well as with the production cultures that inform international arts and crafts markets. In exploring the connection of mask making to capitalism, the book examines the symbolic and material pressures brought to bear on Mexican artisans to embody and enact self-racializing stereotypes and the performance of stigmatized indigenous identities. Shlossberg’s weaving of ethnographic data and cultural theory demystifies the way mask makers ascribe meaning to their practices and illuminates how these practices are influenced by state and cultural institutions. Demonstrating how the practice of mask making negotiates ethnoracial identity with regard to the Mexican state and the United States, Shlossberg shows how it derives meaning, value, and economic worth in the eyes of the state and cultural institutions that mediate between the mask maker and the market.

Author : Anita Ilta Garey
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 558 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Dissertations, Academic
ISBN : UCAL:C3371735

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Constructing Identities as "working Mothers" by Anita Ilta Garey Pdf